April 14, 2011

Dear family,

Things are going pretty good here in Mesquite. Both Elder Alatorre and I are staying here in Mesquite for at least another 6 weeks, so that'll be good. Our new zone leader is one of the missionaries that I knew in Sunrise, and he's been out as long as I have. His name is Elder Babcock.

We still have Margarita set for baptism next week and also Jose Flores and his 3 boys set for baptism, so that's still 5 set for baptism. We are also still teaching the Castañeda's and we saw them yesterday and tried to set them for baptism. They said that they wanted to wait a little bit, but that they know that the things we're teaching are true and that the church is true.

We had a lot of investigators come to church this past week: 13 in the Spanish branch and 1 in Bunkerville, so 14 total. That's definitely the most that I've ever brought to church in one week on my mission so far. 2 of our investigators even got up and bore their testimony of how watching General Conference at Salt Lake City helped them strengthen their testimony, so that was awesome. It was interesting, though to see how the ward functioned and what their reactions would be when we brought so many people. Usually Spanish members are pretty good at fellowshipping investigators, but there were some other problems. Two of the children that we brought didn't speak any English, and all of the Youth classes were in English even though it's a Spanish branch. So that kind of brought up the question of "Why are all the youth being taught in English when it's a Spanish branch?" Even when youth speak in sacrament meeting for a talk or a testimony, they do it in English instead of Spanish. When we ask them a question in Spanish, they'll respond in English, so there's a couple things that we still need to work at.

I've had pizza for the last 5 days or so, so I'm a little sick of it. We had Little Caesar's last Friday and then we had some leftovers on Saturday the next day for lunch, and then an investigator gave us some Pizza Hut on Sunday, and then on Monday for lunch, we went to Pizza Hut again to find out if we were staying or going and then that night a member gave us some pizza again for dinner. So right now, I'm taking a break from pizza.

So RHS is on their Spring Trip now, huh? That must be pretty fun. I wonder what there is to do in Chicago. I don't really know because I've never been there. I bet seeing Jamestown was pretty fun, too. I think there was a lot of stuff I saw when I was young and I didn't like it because I didn't know what it was/why it was important, but I think now I'd be a little more interested.

I keep forgetting my camera cord to give you guys some pictures, but I promise that there'll be pictures soon. Well, I guess that's pretty much it for this week. I'll tell you if I need anything.

I love you!

Elder Meiners